If you examine closely at the company 118 118 we will probably see just how exceedingly well they have finished & what 118118 have reached inside such a short length of time. www.118.com is not the single telephone enquiry service that exists, the new competition is immense. During 2002 the GB directory enquiries markets opened up to competition by phasing out 192 and renewing it with a large variety of varying 6 digit number which are 118118. A a wide range of fresh directory enquiries service companies have grasped the moment to own a slice of a potentially money making industry, spending millions of GBP on an advertising initiative that is going to be no where close to being as rewarding as the business of 118 118. The 118 118 directory enquiries service is also available online, making it easier for you to do your directory enquiries online.

The 118 118 company telephone numbers is the starring directories assistance company in the UK. Each week the 118 118 team put through vast amounts of their callers through to people, locations and businesses they require, as a result of this 118118.com is now the most often called telephone numbers of the Great Britain

Findings presently indicate that the U.K. Directory Enquiries industry is the biggest in Europe. www.118118.com provide a wide range of services including the essential which is the telephone number enquiries telephone number service and then other additional services such as film times and locations, train times and train and tube locations.

The telephone number remains the only UK 118 operator to offer a complete free telephone telephone number service targeted at callers from each and every one of the major landline networks. From the 18th March 2008, www.118.com company is happy to state its company changes. at present 0800118FREE this service is free by BT and major fixed networks. Prices by mobile phone networks vary. 118811 is currently 40 pence per minute and the company 118118 is 69 p per call, 25 p per minute, which is a large improvement taking into account it used to be more expensive than a quid.

Copyright 2006 Richard Grady

I have recently changed the service which I use to send my email
newsletter every couple of weeks. This has resulted in all of my
subscribers having to re-confirm that they would like to
continue receiving the newsletter.

Of course when dealing with moving such a large number of people
to a new service (over 40,000 subscribers!), it is inevitable
that I would lose some along the way. I am still in the process
of moving the list but I anticipated from the start that I would
lose as many as 80% of my subscribers BUT, (and this is the
thing you might think is weird!), I am totally happy with that.

WHY?

Let me explain…..

Well there are several reasons:

1. I started building this newsletter list in 2001 so many of
the emails held on the list are several years old. I am sure
that several thousand addresses are ‘old’ and no longer checked
by the original user. How many of you have the same email
address that you had 5 years ago? I can only estimate how many
such addresses I have in my list but for the sake of putting a
figure on it, let’s say 15% of addresses are out of date.

2. As I have already stated above, I know that thousands of
people were not receiving the newsletter because of the
filtering policies of their ISP. I know this because I have had
emails on a regular basis from people that have subscribed but
never actually got the newsletters. I know I had sent them, they
just weren’t getting through. Also, since asking everyone to
re-confirm their subscription, several people have emailed to
say that they have received the new ‘confirmation’ email despite
not having had a newsletter for months. Again, I can only really
estimate this figure but based on the information I have, I
reckon that as many as 60% of the emails sent could fall into
this category.

3. For a variety of other reasons, I know that a large
percentage of newsletters sent are never read. For some time now
I have been publishing the newsletter as a web page so I know
exactly how many emails I have sent out and how many people have
gone on to read the newsletter. Let’s say that 10% of emails
sent don’t get read for ‘other reasons’.

Based on the figures above, 85% of previous newsletters were
either not getting to the intended recipient or were not being
read when they did get there. This estimate is supported by the
number of web page views each newsletter was getting.

So you can begin to see why I was pretty relaxed about reducing
my subscriber list by so many names - there is really no point
in sending emails to so many people if such a high percentage
are not even receiving/reading them.

Basically I have ‘trimmed the fat’ from my list and now have a
smaller (though there are still several thousand of you!) but
far more up to date group of subscribers that I know are
interested in what I write about and that can actually receive
the newsletters when I send them

The fourth step of how to start an Internet business involves the layout of your site. When organizing it, two audiences must be considered. Obviously, visitors to the site are the first audience. You must also keep in mind the second audience, search engine robots. Both audiences are extremely important and, fortunately, both want the same thing.

Lean, Mean Layout

Your site needs to be clean and quick if you want to be successful. Slow, cluttered sites inevitably fail because visitors and spiders get distracted and leave before taking the action you want. Let’s take a closer look.

Visitors

The layout of your site should allow visitors to quickly find information and solutions. To achieve this, every page should be no more than two clicks from the home page. Have you ever been on a site where you have to hunt to find a particular page? Poor layouts are aggravating and hurt conversion rates.

Make things as easy as possible by interlinking between the site pages. Every page should have links to primary pages and as many other pages as possible. If you look at good site, links to primary pages are listed across the top and bottom of each page. Links to specific services or products are always listed on each page. It may sound like overkill, but make it as easy as possible for your clients to move around.

Spiders

Search engines use programs called “spiders” to surf the net and index sites. When a spider finds a page, it reads the code from top to bottom and left to right. If the code is clean, the spider will index the page and follow the links to the other pages of the site.

If the code isn’t clean, spiders stop indexing pages. If pages aren’t indexed, they do not appear in search engine results. What stops spiders? Following are the most common problems:

1. Bottlenecks - Make sure each page of your site links to every primary page at a minimum. You do not want a spider to get stuck on a page and miss others.

2. Dynamic Pages - Your pages need to be static or carefully designed. If dynamic, spiders often will not index them because they aren’t sure of the content.

3. Frames - Don’t use this antiquated design technique.

4. Poor URLs - A huge mistake is to put database parameters in the URL. The URL should contain only the domain name and keywords for the page. A good URL reads: http://www.marketingtitan.com/internet_marketing_services. A poor URL with parameters would read: http://www.marketingtitan.com/id#us57486&095783

5. Images - Don’t overuse images and don’t put text in images. Images slow down your site, so make them small and optimized. Robots do not read text inside of images, thus text needs to go outside of the images or ALT tags need to be used.

Evaluating The Layout

Once the site is designed, TEST IT! Surf the pages and see if you are able to flow through the site. Add internal links wherever possible. Finally, test the load times of your site on a 56k dial-up modem. If the site loads in under 20 seconds, you are headed in the correct direction.

Your site layout is important. Make sure it caters to the needs of the visitors, whether human or spider.

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing and advertising company comprised of a search engine optimization specialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing consultant providing internet marketing solutions through integrated design and programming services.

If you have little or no capital but you want to do big international business; if your small business is not doing so well; or your capital is low, why don’t you turn to the Internet? The Internet is the fastest and most efficient method for the newcomer and the struggling businessperson to become an international broker of goods and services.

To start, you may order directories of importers; but they are not absolutely necessary: importers can be found on the business portals too.

My favourite importer’s directories are Interdata’s International Directory of Importers, and of
Agents, Distributors and Wholesalers. (Visit Interdata online: http://www.export-leads.com). Both feature firms worldwide with company information, contact person, telephone and fax numbers, email address, products handled, bank reference, and much more. With the purchase of a directory, you receive a year’s free subscription to an internet site giving you access to global export sales leads.

Since you will conduct your business on the Internet, an email address and Internet connection are a must. If you don’t yet have an email address, you can get one for free from popular sites such as hotmail (Visit Hotmail online: http://www.hotmail.com) and yahoo (Visit Yahoo online:
http://www.yahoo.com). I prefer yahoo because one gets 1 GB of storage space. That is ideal for your business considering the amount of messages and attachments you will receive. As for an
Internet connection, if you cannot afford it, libraries give you free access to theirs simply by possessing their cards. A telephone is also necessary and a fax number will be an advantage. If you can have a website, that will be a big plus.

Now to the nerve of your business: making contacts with importers, agents, distributors and wholesalers and getting suppliers on the business to business (B2B) portals. Your importer’s directories will allow you to contact prospects in your country or area. It is better to start with businesses nearby before broadening out. If your presentation is professional, you should receive positive answers. B2B portals like alibaba, indiamart, ec21 and bidmix will enable you contact suppliers worldwide. (Visit them online respectively at http://www.alibaba.com, http://www.indiamart.com, http://www.ec21.com, and http://www.bidmix.com). They are free to join and their marketing tools can help you promote your business online.

Let’s use alibaba to explain the system. Open the homepage www.alibaba.com. Click on the link Join Free and supply your details. Submit and you become a member of what Forbes Magazine and Alexa.com respectively rank as “Best of the Web” and “N 1 B2B website.”

Do you want to buy? Then search and browse the industry category homepages for products classified into categories; contact suppliers; or post buying trade leads which will enable sellers to contact you directly.

Are you a seller? Then browse the site to find buyers in the rich database; you can also let buyers find you by publishing your product information in the Want to Sell channel; you can also send quotations direct to buyers by clicking the Send Quotation button; but at best become the first choice of buyers.

How? By paying US $349 a year, you become a TrustPass member. Your Trust Pass profile proves to potential business partners that you are authentic and credible. The service allows you to have a product showroom where you give detailes of your products. You can also have a company details page which presents an introduction to your business.

Another useful marketing tool you can use is Trade Alerts. It is efficient, fast and productive. But
be warned: offers will flood your inbox daily and you must really have the time to answer them.

Success stories abound on the B2B websites. Personally I have been able to have business partners on all the continents and have done business beyond my expectations. An Indian
manufacturer of designer wear wrote on indiamart, the gateway to the Indian market, “We regularly get emails from satisfied customers all over the world.” On alibaba we read from an American supplier: “We got 45 buyers in 3 months. The reward is many times worth the expenditure;” a broker from Mainland China raved: “I feel now that business isn’t difficult after all, why didn’t I know of this site before?;” A south American member praised: “We received regular orders from Hungary, China, Taiwan, UK. Our first order was worth US$ 160,000;” and a European businessman says he is “stunned by the 1,823 % online sales increase. The Internet is great.”

With the Internet never have business opportunities been so wide and so near: just at the click of a mouse. But beware of the dangers of doing business on the net. Some of them are phoney and unscrupulous businesspeople, scam artists who will try to defraud you, and malicious people who will cram your box with virus-infested mails. Your ability to sidestep these pitfalls will also largely determine your success on the net.

Sidebar

Broker: a businessperson who acts as intermediary between a seller and a buyer for a commission.

Trade Leads: a request to traders to send you offers or quotations.

Trade Alerts: a request to the website search engine to email you offers or quotations.

Tips for business success: Not all businesses succeed. But if you respect certain fundamental rules,
yours can. Among others, you must embrace your business wholeheartedly; have the will to succeed;
display perseverance, self-confidence, organizational spirit, honesty and integrity. Knowledge is
success: get help to run your business from organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce; study
with business schools in your spare time or through distance education. Also read widely on business
creation, sales, advertising, management and organization and attend training seminars.

My name is Akoli Penoukou. I was born in Lome-Togo (West Africa) in 1953. I went to school in Ghana (West Africa) up to the high school diploma level. I taught French there for one year and then returned to Lome to work. From there I went on “adventures” in Nigeria (West Africa) and Germany. Back home in 1983 I began my business career.

This began with a West German import and export company which represented major German manufacturers like Henkel cosmetics in West Africa. I started as Executive Secretary and ended up five years later as Manager. Then I founded my own company in 1987 which I ran part-time. The activities of the firm having increased dramatically in three years, I diversified into imports and exports. The brokerage business and trade representation constitute the main thrust of my buinsess now.

I have trained as a freelance writer for children and adults and have published in newspapers and magazines such as “Aim” and “Clubhouse” in America.

Hobbies: writing, reading, gardening, languages, music, traveling, and teaching. I am married and have 3 children.

First of all, if you don’t have your own affiliate program that
you are in complete control of, then you DON’T have you own
affiliate program. If you don’t own the database or are not at
least able to download it, then you DON’T have your own
affiliate program. If you have a limit on the number of
products, price, or limited control of your creatives, then you
DON’T have your own affiliate program. If you can NOT directly
contact your affiliates, then you DON’T have your own affiliate
program, someone ELSE does!

How can you fix this?

Running your own affiliate program gives you full control and
allows you to boost your sales significantly. Your product is
the life-blood of your business and your affiliates are the
arteries. Don’t entrust that to just anyone.

Your affiliates are your salesmen; they are the
officially-licensed resellers of your product or service. Train
them, massage them and treat them right! You can’t do that with
a system you have no control over.

An automated affiliate management program allows you to easily
train, manage, pay and reward your affiliates, all from one
central nerve center. You have complete control over everything
about your affiliate program.

When you got your first job, you were trained how to do it,
right? Well, the same holds true for your affiliates. Train them
on how to sell your stuff. An automated affiliate management
program effortlessly manages this process for you. It also
imposes NO limits on price, the number of products, or messages
you can send to your sales force (affiliates) either.

The system should also allow you to upload both text and graphic
ads and banners to your affiliate center. That is where your
affiliates go to grab their affiliate code, banners and text for
their promotional efforts. You can come up with your own
creatives and upload them, ready-made for your affiliates to use
in all types of promotions (i.e. banners, classifieds, ezines,
lists, etc.).

You can also use your autoresponder(s) to set up a training
series for your affiliates that teaches them exactly how to
promote your program. You can view sales and conversion stats
for your affiliates. They can also view their own stats, but the
beauty is that you can use this information to direct messages
to certain groups of affiliates.

For instance, you can send a special message to your strong
affiliate(s) offering them a larger commission as an incentive
to promote your program harder. You could also use the
statistical data from your affiliate center to target those
struggling affiliates. You can even inquire and direct more
focused training or help their way.

You run YOUR affiliate program with complete control! You can
set up trackers for the banners and ads so you can track banner
campaigns, or just see how well your classified ad pulls. Be
creative; do it your way. That’s the real power in having your
own robust affiliate program that you control. You have the
flexibility to run it the way you want.

You can find stand-alone affiliate software, or affiliate
management software in many places on the Internet. Simply
perform a search for it in your favorite search engine. There
are also many hosted systems that don’t require you to mess
around with any new software up-loads and learning curves. A
program like this is best if you want a robust, integrated
system that you can simply plug your products into and get
bookin’ with some sales! Integrated systems also tie in many
other features, like sequential autoresponders, list management
and email marketing capabilities, ad tracking, expense tracking
and product management functionality.

Rigid systems like ClickBank are good, but you have no control
over it and NO database. Your affiliate database belongs to
ClickBank. Don’t get me wrong. ClickBank has its place, but if
you have your own product/service and you’re serious about your
e-business, then you need to have full-control over every aspect
of your e-business. Letting someone else have your database is
like having no business at all. What the heck is that?

Online, hosted systems were created just for this purpose -
Total e-business automation, from click to sale. You Have
Control - You Own The Database - You Set Your Limits - PLUS, it
is integrated with all of your business’s other marketing and
ecommerce functions for a Total Kick Butt - Take No Prisoners
All-In-One E-Business Automation System!

Don’t forget the stand-alone programs that run from your website
that you completely own outright. These, you have to configure
and upload to your server. You may have to create a database and
edit some scripts in order for this type of affiliate program to
work correctly. If you’re that savvy, then a stand-alone system
may be what you need. However, if you don’t have time and/or the
expertise, an existing hosted solution is your best option. They
are already tested and proven and just waiting for you to plug
your business in.

That’s the secret to increasing your traffic and your sales
using affiliate management programs. You face the truth about
your affiliate program, realize the opportunities, choose your
option then, execute!

Let’s say that you put up a web page that, for example, talks about baseball and the latest hitting techniques. Then you place your Google AdSense code on the page and when you refresh the page you get advertisements for Lebanese Nomads that collect baseballs? Ok, maybe your ads aren’t that irrelevant, but you get the point.

If you run a blog or a website that does not necessarily concentrate on one particular topic but a multitude of topics then you have probably had some difficulty getting Google to display the proper ads for your page. Well, I have developed a little trick. I don’t know if anyone else uses this trick, I haven’t checked, but if you don’t then you might benefit from it.

On a particular site of mine I was having this exact problem with one of my pages, so here is what I did. I opened Adobe Photoshop (or any image editing program) and I created an image that was 1 pixel high and 1 pixel wide. Then I filled the canvas with the exact same color as the background of the web page I was having difficulty with. I then saved that image as “spacer.gif”, uploaded to my server and inserted it into my web page near the top but off to the side where no one would be clicking their mouse.

Then, and here comes the important part, I surfed around the internet for some text, any text that was keyword relevant rich of the topic that I wanted ads displayed for. I collected a good amount of text, maybe 500-600 words of it. I made sure that there was no site addresses, trademarks, or copyright information in the text so nobody would be able to tell where I got it from if they did happen to see it (which is VERY unlikely). I then copied the text to the clipboard and inserted an ALT tag into my image tag on the page in question. Inside the ALT tag I pasted the entire contents of the clipboard and then just closed the ALT attribute with an ending double-quote. Then I uploaded my new page to the web and waited about 20 minutes.

Bingo! Relevant ads, just like that. Now from what I can gather, this is not against the Terms of Service of Google’s AdSense program AS LONG AS the ads that you are forcing are relevant to the main content of your site. There is nothing wrong to force auto -parts ads if you run a commercial auto-parts website. It is just better business that’s all.

The good part is that the ALT tag will usually only display itself if the user rolls their mouse over the image and keeps it there, and being that the image is only 1 square pixel it makes it REALLY difficult to do that. This has worked for me about 80% of the time, so give it a try.

In the e-business world time is not the only thing worth money, space is as well. Good luck with your endeavors and be sure to check out my new blog http://designfordummies.blogspot.com where I will be posting more neat tricks to help expand your wallet =).

Jim Nesbitt CIW
http://designfordummies.blogspot.com

Anyone with an online business, whether for auctions,
services, or virtually any type of product, has asked the
same question at some time during their quest to create
the ultimate online business - “How do I accept credit
cards?”

Since over 90% of all transactions on the Internet
involve customers paying by credit card, accepting
plastic money rates a must for almost any business.

The problem for most small online business owners
involves the high cost of setting up and maintaining a
credit card merchant account.

With startup fees ranging from $200 to $500, minimum
monthly fees of at least $40 to $50, plus per transaction
fees and a percentage of sales, most people who want to
supplement their income online or test an idea can’t risk
that kind of money.

Add in credit checks, 48-month service contracts,
expensive equipment purchases or leasing, financial
statements, and last 3 years’ tax returns and most people
throw up their hands and give up before they even get
started.

Fortunately several companies responded to this problem
with unique solutions that enable smaller online
merchants to accept credit cards at a fraction of those
high startup costs with no long-term commitment, no
equipment purchases, and zero minimum monthly fees.

~ PayPal.com ~

PayPal has gotten some negative press over the last
couple of years, but that press has been mostly
undeserved.

PayPal makes it easy for you to collect money for your
online sales, send money to merchants, bill people
monthly, collect dues and donations and integrate a free
shopping cart into your site.

Of all the payment and money transfer services online,
PayPal ranks as the absolute lowest in cost and the
easiest to set up.

PayPal allows merchants to sell physical and downloadable
products along with personal services.

~ ClickBank.com ~

For a $50 one-time fee ClickBank enables online ebook,
software and other electronic information sellers to not
only accept credit cards, but provide instant delivery of
their products to online purchasers.

ClickBank allows any merchant to accept virtually every
major credit card on the planet.

The online merchant simply adds a purchase link to their
site, the customer clicks the link, fills in their
payment information and the credit card gets authorized
on the spot.

Once the card gets approved ClickBank redirects the buyer
to a page that enables them to download the ebook,
software, or other product they have just purchased.

ClickBank also operates a fully integrated affiliate
program that automatically pays affiliates who sell your
products for you.

ClickBank heavily restricts what merchants may sell
through the service and does not allow the sale of
physical goods.

~ PaySystems.com ~

Of the three, Paysystems behaves most like a traditional
credit card merchant account.

The service allows the merchant to integrate with a
number of third-party shopping carts as well as use the
PaySystems shopping cart system.

Merchants pay a small transaction fee and a percentage of
the sale, but don’t sign up for any long-term service
contracts or equipment leases.

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the
co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how
to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of
targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…

Simple “Traffic Machine” brings Thousands of NEW visitors to
your website for weeks, even months… without spending a
dime on advertising!”Turn Words Into
Traffic”